Photo credit: Will Whitford The Okavango Delta in Botswana is a vast watery wonderland
by Sue Watt (Post Pandemic Travel Feature)
After two years and two Covid-induced cancellations, my partner Will and I finally made it back to Botswana’s Okavango Delta last month, commissioned to write about ‘slow safaris’ as part of the post-pandemic concept of ‘travelling back better.’
Mary Fitzpatrick’s interesting RoundTrip Foundation blog Slow Travel – A Better Approach to Travel in a Post-Covid World highlights some of the joys she discovered in taking more time on your travels when her plans unexpectedly went awry. Ours was very much a deliberate plan, staying for six days in just one place, the new Khwai Leadwood Tented Camp, for our entire safari.
Normally, like most safari-goers, we would be hopping from camp to camp in different reserves every couple of days. But these short sojourns rarely give you the chance to truly get to know places or the stories they can tell. We wanted to take our time, to reconnect with the wild and make the most of every moment back in the bush.
Kwai Leadwood – Home in the bush
We chose Khwai Leadwood not just for its wildlife credentials but also for its connections with the local community. It is one of African Bush Camps’ (ABC’s) 16 properties across Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe – a safari operator well known for supporting conservation and local communities.
After all the chaos of Covid, with tourism one of the worst-hit sectors, I wanted to ensure our trip benefited people affected by the pandemic. ABC pays lease fees directly to the Khwai Development Trust (KDT), which runs a sustainable Community Based Natural Resource Management Program on behalf of nearby Khwai village, home to around 400 people. Distributing funds to villagers, the Trust derives income from tourism operators in its two concessions: the vast Khwai Private Reserve, exclusively leased by one operator with a handful of camps, and Khwai Community Concession, where our camp is based, with a mix of privately owned camps and community camping grounds for self-drivers.
A slow safari
I loved our slow safari even more than I thought I would. I liked going back to places we’d come to love, like the Waterlily Pan with its myriad birds reflected in the water, or around Moremi Game Reserve’s expansive plains where we’d watch herds of elephants and antelopes, and track lions and leopards. We drifted along the Delta in a mokoro and flew over it on a scenic helicopter flight. Sometimes we’d just relax in camp, which by day three, I was instinctively calling ‘home,’ happy that everything felt familiar and getting to know the team, without moving on to new rooms, new routines, new staff.
What surprised me most was how much I enjoyed having the same guide throughout our safari. I realised I didn’t want to up-sticks and start from scratch with a new guide every couple of days. Of course, this depends on whether your guide is good and whether you have a mutual connection.
Photo credit: Will Whitford Behind the leopard’s steely glare is power and grace
Our guide Kutlwana Banda, known as Banda, ticked both these boxes. With a booming voice and a beaming smile, he had an excellent knowledge of wildlife. But it takes more than that to be a good guide. You need to pick up on your clients’ interests, read their experience of wildlife and be able to enhance that. Banda did all this effortlessly, with empathy, humour, and a gentle sense of fun.
On game drives, we’d see plenty of elephants and antelopes, but long grasses often obscured the prints of predators we’d been tracking. Eventually, with Banda’s guiding skills and local knowledge, patience, and a bit of luck, we found a gorgeous leopard we’d been tracking. Later, we found Saxwapa. He’d been eluding us over four days, but our time and efforts spent searching for him were truly rewarded: with his dark flowing mane, he was one of the most beautiful lions I’ve seen.
“Lions, leopards and elephants all come to the village, they even walk through in the daytime,” Banda said as we drove along the gravel road that leads to Khwai, just 10 minutes from our camp.
Tourism and change
Now aged 34, Banda was born and bred here. “I’ve seen a lot of changes,” he said. “Before tourism, there was nothing here, no school or health facilities, just mud-and-grass houses. We used to swim in the river where there are crocodiles; our soccer pitch was just bush. Elephants would come out while we were playing, and we’d all have to run into the river to get away from them.”
He showed us where his home had once stood. Now just one outbuilding remains along with his late grandfather’s modern concrete house, one of many KDT has built for the elderly and disabled. And he pointed out the tuck shop his auntie runs, adorned with murals of waterlilies and elephants. Everyone waved to him, including children leaving school or filling up jerry cans of water from standpipes. KDT installed a huge water tank that supports the whole village, but Covid delayed plans to put water pipes into homes. They installed solar power too and built a health clinic, currently waiting for the government to provide equipment and staff. Meanwhile, a mobile clinic visits twice a month from Mababe, the nearest town 30km away.
When he was seven, Banda was sent away to boarding school. “There was no school here then. It was hard to leave home at that age.” he told me. “There are a lot of kids in Khwai now, and it’s important they can
Photo credit: Will Whitford Local kindergarten plays an important role in preparing children for school
stay at home and get good teaching from the start.”
Today, a new kindergarten hosts 35 children for three hours a day. It’s a colourful, fun place to learn, with murals of animals and the alphabet all around and a sturdy climbing frame outside. Built and run with the support of donors and safari operator Greg Butler of Khwai Private Reserve, the kindergarten opened in 2019. African Bush Camps’ Foundation is now building a kitchen and renovating another classroom, they’ve installed solar panels, and erected a new fence since the previous one was destroyed by elephants.
“Everything here is donated from tourists, safari camps and local businessmen. The kindergarten has made a big difference to the village,” teacher Phetso Masaya told me, smiling gently. “Last year, all the children got grade A’s and they’ve gone onto primary school being familiar with the school environment, so they do well there too. The school is running very well, but we still need more educational toys.”
Covid-19 and Gender Equality
“Like everywhere else, we had to close during Covid,” she said. “The village had very few cases and no one died here. We followed all the rules.” Both she and fellow teacher T.T. Shaoshiko had been vaccinated, as had most of Khwai’s residents, and Phetso told me happily that she’d had her booster last week.
Photo credit: Will Whitford Kutlwana Banda was an excellent guide
I asked Banda how local people felt about tourists returning with all the inherent risks of Covid. “They’re not so worried about tourism bringing in Covid because they know about vaccinations,” he replied. “They welcome guests coming back and hoped they’d come back sooner so that they could have the income they needed.”
African Bush Camps employs 600 staff throughout their company and had to reduce hours and pay, but they maintained an all-important presence in the parks to deter poachers and look after the camps, even when they had no guests. “It was tough through Covid,” Banda confirmed. “Usually we work two months on, then 18 days off. During Covid we worked one month on, one month off.”
His wife Lebotsang is a chef at Khwai Leadwood and ABC work hard to promote gender equality. Their latest important initiative is a Female Guide Training Scheme, with five women recently joining their Botswana camps in what has traditionally been a male dominated profession. They also take on 10 local young people each year to train up in hospitality.
As a child, Banda’s favourite fishing spot was the Khwai River that flows beside our camp’s new dining terrace. “I used to fish here with my father, who was also a guide,” he reminisced.
“Because of tourism, local people are coming back here,” Banda told me. “I went away to school and for work, but I would always come back to Khwai – my roots are here in this village.”
For similar articles check out the rest of our series on Travel in a Post Pandemic World by Anthony Ham and Sue Watt.
Photo credit: Will Whitford Elephants in the Okavango Delta